Ayatollah’s rule on the ropes as Iran street protests expand

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei may have less than a week left as ruler of Iran’s repressive Islamic regime, experts told The Post on Saturday.

“I suspect the Supreme Leader’s got about a week, two weeks max to get this under control,” Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA officer on the Iran desk now with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

“Once the demonstrations get up into the tens of thousands, and certainly in the hundreds of thousands, it’s got a real pickle, because that’s a very large number of people to start shooting at, and it could conceivably crack units of the regime enforcers. The Basij [paramilitary units] might become useless at that point,” he said.

Protests have now hit every province of the Islamic Republic, with images of fiery clashes between protesters and internal security forces – including in the Ayatollah’s hometown of Mashhad – getting out of the country despite an Internet blackout.

“If the people continue, it is just another week” of regime power, said Iran expert and dissident Ali Reza Nurizadeh. “They’re almost collapsed. They cannot make a decision,” he said of the Tehran regime.

Cranking up the pressure are President Trump’s words warning the Iranian government not to fire on protesters. “Your brutality against the great people of Iran will not go unchallenged,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social Saturday. “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help!!!” he added.

“It’s scary for them. They are really frightened that Trump [will] do something,” said Nurizadeh. “They are really frightened that what has happened in Venezuela [will be] repeated in Iran, or they bombard Khamenei’s compound, his hiding place.”

Trump cheered the uprising on his Truth Social today and said it would make Iran great again. “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help!!!” he posted on his Truth Social site.

Still unknown is how the Trump administration might use force to send a message, following reports it has held preliminary discussions on how to carry out an attack.

“One version of it would be a strike on an Iranian military target in response to the shooting of protesters. So you’re not hitting them directly on the police or the repression of protesters, but you’re sending the signal that there will be a cost,” said Bruen, who is now president of Global Situation Room.

The US attack on Iran in June ”opens up a new series of options that [Trump] may well choose to pursue.” But it also could contribute to a risk that Iran would try to carry out “asymmetric attacks’ – even in its weakened state.

The internal situation is murky. “There are rumors that some regime insiders are trying to contact the Americans, what they’re hoping to do is what Delcy Rodriguez did to Maduro” said Andrew Apostolou of the Britain Israel Communications and Research Center, referring to the new Venezuelan president in the wake of tyrant Nicholas Maduro’s capture and arrest by the US.

The essential offer: “Hey, I can be your dictator-change candidate,” said Apostolou, who previously ran the Iran program at Freedom House.

There are no signs yet of security forces or generals defecting though.

“For the moment the regime looks coherent, but these things move very very quickly when people feel their survival is at stake. That’s when they make these choices,” he said.

Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former Shah deposed in 1979, penned an op-ed this week offering to serve as a transitional figure to democracy.

“Nostalgia is on overdrive right now. Pahlavi benefits from that,” said Gerecht, whose focus was on developing Iranian targets for the CIA.

Former President Barack Obama has acknowledged his initial response to huge Iranian protests in 2009 was as “mistake” as his team tried to tend to relations with the regime.

“It’s certainly a lesson learned from the Obama years that [the Iranians are] going to accuse us of meddling in any scenario,” said Brett Bruen, who was Director of Global Engagement on the Obama National Security Council.

“So our efforts to appear to avoid it are going to be largely ineffective. So how do we engage in a way that undermines the vulnerability that they have and not provide them with more propaganda.”